Laura Ingraham, the hard-right Fox News host, is tough on crime, immigrants, the “tyranny of the judiciary” and “lawless Democrats,” but Fox News dismisses her own criminal conviction on theft charges as nothing more than a “college prank.”

David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA…totally predictable given acceptance rates.) https://t.co/wflA4hWHXY

IM reported on her college indiscretion yesterday because of her hypocritical mocking in March of honor student and Parkland, Fla, massacre survivor, David Hogg. Hogg graduated this week with a 4.1 grade point average and is now leading a national movement for gun control.

Her conviction surfaced after investigative Web site, thesmokinggun.com uncovered her Circuit Court docket in the town of Hanover, N.H.

A Fox News spokesman responded to the IM report today, saying Ingraham addressed the incident in a May 10 radio broadcast on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

According to a audio tape she explained the incident this way:

“There was some store near Dartmouth okay and some friends and I were together and there was this type of coffee, I can’t remember the name of it but it was flavored coffee… So it was like $2.99 a can and we didn’t have any money with us, but it’s like the kind of thing where you go in there all of the time, oh, we’ll pay them another time. Swipe the coffee can – $2.99. Swipe it on a dare. We walk out the guy comes out, he’s like, ‘Oh did you just swipe the coffee?'”

Ingraham said she promised to return and pay for the coffee when she had the money. But “the guy” apparently was not amused. Ingraham was arrested for shoplifting.

At the time, she was a 19-year-old student at Dartmouth College. The school is supposed to have an honor code, but Ingraham went on to graduate two years later.

There is another odd twist to the case. Ingraham, who is tough on crime on her Fox News show, received the most lenient treatment possible from the court. She was allowed to plead “no contest” to the charge.

The plea means the defendant doesn’t admit guilt, but acknowledges the prosecutor has enough evidence to obtain a conviction. She was fined $200 and allowed to seek a “conditional discharge” of the misdemeanor, providing she stayed out of trouble.

Five months later, Ingraham’s criminal conviction was annulled, according to an entry on the criminal docket. The move effectively erased the conviction, allowing Ingraham to conceal her criminal record.

Without the special treatment, Ingraham could have been impacted when she applied to law school at the University of Virginia. But under a Virginia law, the school is prohibited from considering expunged convictions.

Under the University of Virginia honor code, however, students pledge never to lie, cheat, or steal. “This promise is the cornerstone of the honor system,” according to the school.

A 2000 article in the UVA student newspaper, bemoaned that the school had been lax about disciplining students caught for shoplifting, even though “student shoplifting in Charlottesville is a significant problem.”

Situations like Ingraham’s have led to criticism about “white privilege,” and the inequalities in the justice system faced by African Americans.

In 2016, for example, a 14-year-old Virginia boy was charged with stealing a 65-cent milk carton from his school cafeteria ― despite being enrolled in the free-lunch program, according to The Huffington Post.

Ryan Turk, an African-American, was charged with two misdemeanors of disorderly conduct and petit larceny, after a school resource officer claimed to have seen him “conceal” the drink at Graham Park Middle School in Prince William County. He was expelled from school.

Described as “dogmatic” Conservative, it’s odd she’s so intolerant now.

“This is stupid. I mean, that’s probably the worst thing I did,” she said.

Check out Ingraham’s commentary on the “tyranny” of the judiciary below. Let us know your thoughts and be sure to follow IM on Twitter for the latest media news.

About The Author

TheImproper Staff

Keith Girard is Editor and Publisher of TheImproper, New York City’s cutting edge arts, entertainment pop culture and lifestyle Web magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of Billboard magazine and a reporter for the Washington Post among other media positions.